


Hard on the Memory

by emrisemrisemris



Series: On Other Fields [3]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Extra Scene, Fantasy, Flashbacks, M/M, Masturbation, Missing Scene, it’s basically five flashbacks’ worth of “oh no he’s hot”, somewhere between ACO chapters 5 and 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:32:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: When Thaletas had put Delos behind him, he'd sailed for Lakonia, and from there been given a new command and sent west to the Messenian front not long after. "I have never fought in Korinth. Some of my men have. Am I harbouring a traitor?"Brasidas held up both hands. "Neither your loyalty nor that of your men is in question. No, the person I am investigating is a misthios, Alexios the Eagle Bearer. I'm told you fought together in Mykonos."Oh.
Relationships: Alexios/Thaletas (Assassin's Creed), Brasidas & Thaletas (Assassin's Creed), Kyra & Thaletas (Assassin's Creed)
Series: On Other Fields [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600291
Comments: 1
Kudos: 101





	Hard on the Memory

Somewhere in Messenia, not far outside a village whose name he had already forgotten, Thaletas rewrote his plan of attack for the third time. Though he itched to call the battle, it would be suicide to do it before their spies confirmed the Athenian forces' strength, and the scouts he'd sent ranging north and east would not be back for days.

His brittle concentration was shattered finally by the the sounds of a rider approaching, and the clatter of the gate guard going to intercept them. With luck it would be a mercenary responding to the call that had gone out for blades to bolster Sparta. 

At that thought, he threw his stylus angrily point-down into the clay tablet and sat down heavily on a camp stool, kneading the heels of his hands into his eyes in a vain attempt to clear his head. Fractious Hellas was thick with mercenaries at the best of times, and now, with the whole Aegean in the grip of the Delian-Peloponnesian war, they swarmed like locusts. The odds that he would even have heard of whichever sword-for-hire walked into the camp were low. 

He could not keep hoping, every time, that it would be Alexios. Every time hope leapt in his chest only to be crushed back down, it left a scar. He should wait, concentrate on winning battles, and trust in the gods to bring them back together when the time was right.

Trust in the gods, and in Alexios' unnatural talent for hunting people down. 

"General -" one of the gate guard stepped into the open tent-flap, blocking the light "- you have a visitor."

"Thank you," said the visitor from behind the guard, and came forward to clasp Thaletas' hand as the guard retreated. Not a mercenary at all: a polemarch, and a polished one at that, travel-worn but without the layer of mud and dust that every soldier at the frontline had been living under for weeks. "General Thaletas. My name is Brasidas. I need to speak with you privately on a matter of great importance."

He let go Thaletas' hand, and produced a seal of office, the flat end incised with the lambda of Lakonia.

An urgent message, a messenger of high rank, sent from far enough behind the front that he was still city-clean ... this could not be good news. As if they needed anything else. Thaletas grimaced, and said "My men are honest, but tents are thin. If your message is so secret, there's a shrine to Athena nearby where we can talk."

"May She favour us with Her wisdom," Brasidas said with what sounded like an edge of regret, and waited politely out of the way while Thaletas briefed his second-in-command.

The shrine of Athena was no more than a few hundred yards away, in amongst the trees, surrounded by the low-lying remains of walls. The pedestal of the statue held a motley collection of offerings, and somebody had leant a cracked shield against the base.

In Sparta itself, the great temple of Athena Poliouchos cast its shadow over half the city, the image of the goddess towering over Her worshippers. The statue here had lost half its bright paint to rain, and the bronze spear in Her stone hand was badly corroded, but the shape of the stone was intact: Athena stood with a straight back, head held high, and an expression of serene determination. Thaletas knew he was not the only one who had found a certain kinship with the image.

He sat on one of the low walls; Brasidas dusted some leaf litter off a fallen pillar a few feet away, and sat on that. 

"Now," Thaletas said, and braced himself inwardly for bad news - delayed reinforcements, political upheaval, or, worse, the order to retreat. "What is this secret message?"

Brasidas set his hands on his knees, bronze wristbands gleaming in the dappled sunlight that slanted down between the leaves, and said, in the tones of one who said this often, "I am a spy. Before Sparta can put soldiers in the field, we must know where our enemies are. Before that, we must know _who_ they are, and that can be complicated." He sighed. "I have come from Korinth, where things have just become a great deal more unstable. I have orders to investigate the people involved, and I believe you can help me."

When Thaletas had put Delos behind him, he'd sailed for Lakonia, and from there been given a new command and sent west to the Messenian front not long after. "I have never fought in Korinth. Some of my men have. Am I harbouring a traitor?"

Brasidas held up both hands. "Neither your loyalty nor that of your men is in question. No, the person I am investigating is a misthios _,_ Alexios the Eagle Bearer. I'm told you fought together in Mykonos."

Oh.

*

A dark beach, lit in volcanic colours by burning wreckage, and a close, vicious skirmish to the death. They'd already lost so much, three-quarters of the ship's complement dead and the ship shattered beyond hope of repair. So Thaletas yelled his handful of men into line and set to; even if they were overwhelmed, they could at least sell their lives expensively.

They'd lived, thanks in no small part to Kyra's reinforcements. He'd first laid eyes on Alexios in the aftermath, surrounded by carnage, the scent of smoke and death in his nostrils and both of them filthy and painted to the elbow in other people's blood. The mercenary had looked him over as they exchanged pleasantries, a long, insolent, _interested_ look, and it had gone straight to Thaletas' prick.

And then when the mercenary had gone, off on whatever strange errand, doubt had set in. It wouldn't be the first time he'd imagined interest where there was none; ego and adrenaline would do that. So he'd overseen the grim work of clearing enough of the camp to sleep in, and tried to put Kyra's mercenary out of his mind. He'd still woken in the faint hours of the morning painfully hard, the wisps of some unsettling dream vanishing as he did so.

He should have just pissed and gone back to sleep, or maybe taken a turn along the dunes and spoken to the night watch to give himself a little time to cool off. Instead he'd thought to ease matters by bringing himself off, and when he closed his eyes he saw the long-haired stranger and his grin again. Remembered, too, the way his shoulders and arms moved as he wielded a weapon in either hand, and the brutal strength which which he'd gone through the Athenians, cracking shields and sending opponents reeling.

There were always filthy rumours that some mercenaries sold more than one kind of work. Undoubtedly they were only rumours, the kind spread by petty misers who did not think much of mercenaries _or_ hetairai and resented having to pay either, but with just enough substance to hang a daydream on.

Thaletas lay in his tent and jerked himself to the thought of what it would be to buy the submission of that lithe strength, that coiled power, even for a night. An hour. Just as long as it took to put the handsome mercenary on his knees and fuck his beautiful, insolent mouth.

*

"We did," Thaletas said, and knew, _knew,_ that his voice was neutral and level and betrayed nothing. 

Brasidas looked at him for a long moment, face unreadable, and then said "I have been told two stories about the Eagle Bearer. One is halfway to myth, a wild tale about an immortal warrior with a magic eagle. One is a list of victories that is almost as hard to believe." He began to tick them off on his fingers. "In Megaris, he fought with Sparta. In Phokis, Malis and Lokris, for Athens. In Delos and the Obsidian Islands, for Sparta again. In every case, for the victors. He is implicated in at least a dozen assassinations, of politicians on both sides of the war and others not obviously involved." The spy let his hands fall, as if giving up on the whole mess, and looked expectantly at Thaletas. "Neither tells me anything about the man himself. I realised I needed to speak to somebody who had met him in person."

Met, yes; met, fucked, bled with, lost his heart to.

The first three would raise no eyebrows. The fourth ... what should have happened, in the neat script that Sparta wrote for all its citizen sons, would be that Thaletas came home to Lakonia, married a woman of good birth, found a lover amongst his brother soldiers if he wanted one, and did not waste another thought on a man he'd known for three months, slept with once, and who had no loyalty to the Spartan banner or any other.

The script had not been ready for Alexios, and neither, it seemed from Brasidas' crisp recitation of his military record, had a lot of other people.

"I knew him well," Thaletas said, which was true - if so incomplete it hurt - and then could not contain himself. "What in Hades has he done in Korinth?"

"I'll explain afterward," Brasidas said, unruffled. "First, please, your report." He sat forward, elbows on his knees, chin intently on his clasped hands. "Start with a description. I want to be certain we have met the same person."

*

The second time he met Alexios had been at the makeshift council of war at the rebel hideout. He'd walked in at some point while Kyra and Thaletas were arguing bitterly over whether to strike or wait. Thaletas hadn't even noticed the mercenary was there until he'd thrown up his hands in disbelief at something Kyra said, half turned, and found they were no longer alone. Alexios leaned on the wall a few feet from the table, arms folded. He was out of his battle armour, in a plain tunic and ragged mantle that had slipped a little on his shoulders, showing the shadow of one collarbone and the neat silver scar that crossed it.

Any hope of being able to get the man out of his head died on the spot, which at the time had only made Thaletas seethe more. He had a war to fight, he was having to wrangle with Kyra over every fucking detail, she was still sniping at him - and he at her - over the one disastrous time they'd gone to bed, and he didn't need any more distractions -

They argued it over _again_ , as if somehow saying all the same things more angrily would help in the slightest, and Alexios took his side. His heart had leapt absurdly - stupid, adolescent, as if it meant anything more than a shared preference for action over caution - and then plummeted again when Kyra cursed both of them for a pair of reckless fools and walked out.

Thaletas had spent the cold, dark ride back to the beach camp stewing in his own uncertainty: had he made the right call? He was sure he had, but would he have been so sure if Alexios had sided with Kyra? Why was he putting so much weight on a misthios' opinion anyway? He was impressively effective, but was neither trained in strategy nor knew the local context, whereas Kyra did ... and on, and on.

It would have been easier if every thought he tried to have about the mercenary's capabilities hadn't slid treacherously towards other things. Alexios' laugh, his eyes, his easy confidence. That fucking grin.

*

"Older than me, younger than you," Thaletas said at last. "Tall. Long hair, with beads in. He has a scar under his left eye, and another on his upper arm - three slashes, here." 

He indicated on his own arm, and stamped down hard on the memory of kissing Alexios' scars; of pinning him down under a sinking moon, tasting sweat and smoke, revelling in the wordless noises the mercenary made under his hands.

"I had thought perhaps, with so long a list of conquests, maybe two men ..." Brasidas shrugged. "Evidently not. Tell me about the Mykonos campaign."

"Surely you have mine and Herodianos' reports," Thaletas said.

"I find these things come much more alive when I hear them told aloud," Brasidas said, and settled back expectantly. 

The spy would not hold the rank he did if he wasn't also a seasoned officer, and close to, the crisscross of nicks and scars over his knuckles spoke to time in the battle line. He was a citizen, a soldier; he _knew._ It still took every scrap of Thaletas' patience not to snap and say _It was a fucking mess; it was a war, what did you expect?_

"The leader of Mykonos - his name was Podarkes - bled the Silver Islands almost dry," Thaletas said instead. Let Brasidas make whatever deductions he wanted from the bare facts. "The people turned on him. The rebels managed to bribe two sea captains to carry messages for help. One to the Spartan garrison in the Sporades, and one to the Eagle Bearer."

"Personally?" Brasidas said, sounding intrigued.

*

Perhaps a week after the argument, Kyra and two of her men came down to the beach camp after dark, saddlebags loaded down with supplies. With those unloaded and stowed, she sat down by Thaletas' campfire, helped herself to the wine jug, cast an appraising glance around the camp and said "Where's your friend the mercenary?"

"Hiding his ship," Thaletas said. "There's no sense in moving against Podarkes while he's tied up openly at Mykonos dock."

Kyra raised an eyebrow. "So at least one of you has some sense. Good."

The comment was pointed but had no real malice in it, which was several steps up from the last time they'd spoken. Thaletas acknowledged the olive branch with a nod, and, rather than press a sore subject, asked instead "What made you seek out this misthios particularly? The Aegean is crawling with them."

Kyra waved her wine-cup and said "Kasos knows the servants at Praxiteles' house. You know, the oil merchant. He hosted Podarkes for dinner, and of course they listened. It seems that recently, one of Podarkes' political contacts was murdered, and it shook him very badly." She smiled wolfishly. "He's realised he isn't untouchable. I'm almost sorry he won't have longer to stew in it."

"And this misthios was the assassin," Thaletas guessed.

"Exactly."

"So that's why you hired him," Thaletas said. "I'd wondered if you'd just picked one you heard was good-looking."

Kyra burst out laughing. "That ... was an unexpected bonus." She checked, cup loose in her hand, and gave him a look of incredulity. "Wait. Wait. Thaletas, really?"

"Isn't _finding someone else to moon over_ exactly what you told me to do?" Thaletas said, with a sidelong look.

"I didn't expect ... You know what? Fine," Kyra said. "Good luck with that one. But I swear, if you do something stupid because you're thinking with your prick instead of your brain -"

"Kyra -" Thaletas began.

"- you won't get a _chance_ to die in a glorious frontal attack on Podarkes, because I'll strangle you myself," Kyra said flatly.

"Don't insult me," Thaletas retorted, affronted. "I'm not going to forget my mission and my duty over some mercenary -"

"Even a Spartan one?" Kyra interjected.

"Sparta," Thaletas said, attempting to ignore the way Kyra was smirking at him, "sent me to take these islands for you, and that's what I'm going to do. The Eagle Bearer too, if he wants to get paid." He took a breath, steadied himself. "Everything else takes second place to that."

*

"Yes," Thaletas said. "The rebel leader had word he'd been involved in the death of one of Podarkes' allies -"

"Who?" Brasidas said sharply.

Thaletas shook his head. "I don't know."

Brasidas _tsk_ ed. "And his part in the campaign?"

"His crew cracked the blockade to let our reinforcements through. He killed three of the most heavily protected men on Mykonos and half their personal guard," Thaletas said bluntly. "Two Athenian polemarchs and Podarkes himself. I wouldn't have believed it was possible if I hadn't been there."

"And he took the battlefield under your command?" Brasidas pressed.

*

He'd just finished addressing his men, ahead of what was likely to be another bruising night raid on Podarkes' thugs, when once again he became aware he wasn't alone.

"A fine speech," Alexios said, applauding with ironical slowness from somewhere behind him.

Thaletas swung round, still a little unsettled by the mercenary's talent for appearing silently, and retorted "Athenians give speeches. Spartans give orders."

"If I was under your command -" Alexios folded his arms, the shadow of a grin playing around his mouth "- what would you order me to do?"

Abruptly the warm night seemed to be warmer.

Surely this was Alexios needling him - some mercenaries could be like that, enjoying rubbing it in that they lay outside the army's strictures. Surely that, and not what it sounded like, which was a barefaced invitation to exactly what he'd fantasised over and been sure, sure he couldn't have -

"Same thing I order my men," Thaletas said, controlling his tone with difficulty. "Bruised, broken or bloody, never hold back."

"I never hold back," Alexios said softly.

"I can tell," Thaletas said, and that was the heartfelt truth, for all it could still be just barely construable as professional respect.

Alexios looked him straight in the eye, and said "I wasn't talking about fighting."

Every well-born Spartan, whether girls with their tutors or boys at the agoge, learned to control their face, to be able to respond to pain or humiliation or horrifying news with the unflinching discipline Sparta prized. It had not been a pleasant or short lesson, and its applications often grim, but at that moment Thaletas was ready to thank every god in the firmament for it.

What he wanted to do was - at least half a dozen things, all of them obscene, then and there. What he said was "I know, and I'm tempted."

"But ...?" Alexios said, when he didn't finish the sentence.

He had a mission; he had an oath to Sparta; and he had Kyra's words eating at him. Behind the teasing had been real steel. She'd voiced what he had shied from, even in the privacy of his own head: what if he failed, wasted his own life and those of his men and those of the rebels, because his attention had been too much on the pretty mercenary and not enough on a knife-edge war?

"I sailed here for Kyra," Thaletas said. "She's the one I fight for. For now."

He could not parse the look that briefly crossed Alexios' face, before he turned the conversation back to the Athenian blockade. 

*

"Yes, and cut a bloody track through the Athenians, like he was being paid to do. He's a _mercenary_ ," Thaletas said, trying to put the right edge of dismissiveness into his voice, without letting it rise or waver. "He'll take orders from anyone who pays."

(And, once, for a golden hour on Delos, from Thaletas. Not the time to remember that. Not now.)

Brasidas' tone sharpened again. "I'm surprised the Delian rebels had the drachmae to spare."

Something prickled the back of Thaletas' neck, the faintest stirring of unseen danger. What was the spy getting at? "Banditry and not paying Podarkes' taxes? How should I know?"

A moment of tense silence passed, and then Brasidas abruptly stood up, and started to pace back and forth in front of the overgrown steps of the altar. Thaletas rose, but stayed still, settling with grim deliberateness into parade rest and waiting.

"It makes no _sense,_ " Brasidas burst out eventually, voice thick with frustration. "By all accounts the Eagle Bearer commands a steep fee - but he also works for those who cannot hope to pay. It isn't loyalty to one side or the other; he takes Athenian drachmae as readily as Spartan. His assassinations don't line up with any agenda I can understand." He turned back to Thaletas, shaking his head, and composed himself again with visible effort. "Thank you, General. You've given me a great deal to think about." There was a rueful tone to his words that suggested whatever fundamental question underlay the interrogation had not actually been answered. "I said I would explain; if you'll give me your word it is to go no further -"

"You have it," Thaletas interrupted.

Brasidas nodded. "Very well. In Korinth the guild of hetairai hired him to bring down the Monger - a man with a mob who ruled much of the city by bribery and fear." He shook his head ruefully. "Our governor and garrison had tried for months to find a way to remove him without destabilising the entire city, and ..."

"Let me guess," Thaletas said dryly. "Alexios decided not to bother with the second half."

There was no humour in Brasidas' face or voice when he nodded. "Precisely. Korinth is in chaos. And the Athenians have seized their moment. Unless the Two Kings are willing to pull soldiers away from a different province, we will lose Korinthia, and soon."

"If Athens takes Korinthia the entire northeastern border of Arkadia becomes a front," Thaletas said hotly, all else briefly forgotten. "We cannot afford -"

"We cannot afford any more setbacks," Brasidas said. "Exactly. When you knew the Eagle Bearer in Mykonos, I don't suppose he ever talked about his family?"

It took Thaletas a moment to refocus. "The omen." Alexios had told him only in the bluntest, most compressed terms: the oracle, the sacrifice, the cliff. It had been abundantly clear even at the time that the bare details were mere islands in an ocean of unspoken pain; he'd had no desire to plumb it further. "Yes. And he's carried a grudge against Sparta ever since. He made a point of telling me."

No need for Brasidas to know it had been a raw, desolate confession rather than a gloat or threat.

"Did you recognise the details?" the spy said.

Thaletas shook his head.

"There's no reason you should," Brasidas clarified. "The krypteia went to some trouble to smooth things over, and you would only have been a child when it happened. King Archidamos, though -" he made a face "- remembers it well. It was when he ruled alongside King Pausanias' father. The omen almost toppled both of them."

"What?" Thaletas said, uncomprehending. "How?"

"It struck very close to the throne," Brasidas said. "Alexios' mother was Myrrine, a daughter of Leonidas. Your mercenary friend is the grandson of one king, the nephew of another and the cousin of one of the current ones. Now you appreciate why this is political," he added bleakly, as Thaletas felt the roof of his mouth go dry. "What happened to Myrrine's children set off years of rumours about a conspiracy in one of the royal houses, aimed at the other. It weakened Lakonia badly at a time we needed strength, and that was when both children were thought dead. One of them alive -" Brasidas half-shrugged, the gesture delicately full of unspoken meaning. "Both kings are adamant that it cannot be allowed to weaken us again."

The unease that had prickled at Thaletas' collar turned into a chill that shivered his spine, despite his cloak and the warm day.

He faintly thought he should be surprised, and was at some level taken aback that he wasn't. Shocked, perhaps, but not surprised. Any child knew that the line of Leonidas went back to Heracles, and he could believe that a little of the blood of Olympus ran in Alexios' veins. He'd even told the mercenary he fought like a god, only half-joking, after Alexios had put him in the dust. 

Brasidas, smoothly the diplomat, had not voiced the inevitable conclusion of his little speech, so Thaletas said it for him. "That's what this is, isn't it? The kings are split over whether to buy his loyalty, or kill him."

Brasidas gazed up at the weathered face of the statue of Athena, and without looking at Thaletas said "It hasn't come to that yet."

"But it will," Thaletas said bluntly.

"Almost certainly." Brasidas turned back, spreading his hands helplessly. "Whatever quest he is on, he is quartering the map for it. It can only be a matter of time before he comes to Lakonia."

*

Thaletas had served on enough fronts that he could no longer instantly say how many. After every conquest, the moment when the clouds parted over the horizon to glimpse the white upreared shoulders of Taygetos again - the sight of _home_ , solid and waiting, though it might be days of hard travel away still - had been an uncontaminated joy.

Now it was bittersweet; he felt the same wrench at his heart in returning to Lakonia as he'd felt innumerable times in leaving it, as if he'd left a little of himself behind.

As he always had, he daydreamed on the voyage of the familiar green slopes and grey heights; but now every scene he'd treasured in memory, once as pristine and unchanging as a painted vase, made room for Alexios. The streets of Sparta city suddenly demanded to be walked side by side. The valley of yellow flowers below his sister's house, and the pool where the stream at the bottom widened, no longer promised peaceful solitude but companionable silence.

He carved out, too, a new vision, of a little house somewhere, or a polemarch's quarters or just a tavern room - its details hazy, but somewhere that was not a cave or a ruin or a battlefield; somewhere, however small, wholly to themselves - where he could order Alexios out of his armour and reacquaint himself, at length, with all his wonders. The way he kissed, the texture of his braids tight between Thaletas' fingers, his scent; the moment when all his pride and assurance finally gave way, and he gave himself up entirely to sensation in Thaletas' arms.

*

"What will you advise the kings?" Thaletas said, when it had become clear that Brasidas was leaving that thought too diplomatically unfinished.

"I can't advise. Only inform." Brasidas shrugged. "And I will _inform_ them that Sparta cannot afford to have the Eagle Bearer as our enemy." 

He cast one more glance up at the worn-down visage of Athena, shook his head very slightly as if disappointed by something, and then said almost apologetically "I should go."

They walked back to the camp in silence, the air tense between them. At the gate, Brasidas the spy untied his horse, patted it affectionately on the nose, and said "Thank you, General. You've done the Two Kings a great service."

"Whatever Sparta requires," Thaletas said, with all appropriate courtesy, and felt his fingernails dig into his palms as he watched Brasidas ride away.


End file.
